Recognition in Redistribution: Care and Diversity in Global Justice

In an exchange with Axel Honneth and in other writings in the late 1990s, Nancy Fraser argued against privileging recognition in social and political philosophy without a concomitant consideration of the requirement for redistribution.1 Thus she argued for coupling the recognition of identities—racial, gender, cultural, etc.—with attention to the need for economic redistribution. In reply, Axel Honneth suggested instead that recognition itself is at the root of the theory of justice.2 However divergent their approaches, both theorists discussed this issue in the context of a nation-state or political society, leaving open the question of the applicability of these notions in a more global perspective. And although Fraser has recently turned to consider norms for this transnational domain, the question remains not only how to conceive the general interrelation of these two concepts of recognition and redistribution but also more specifically which sorts of differences should be recognized as playing a significant role within redistributive principles themselves or in their practical application. This problem becomes acute in the context of global justice and transnational recognition, where a multitude of differences comes into play— not only between the global south and north, but also in terms of culture, nationality, and gender, among others. In this article, I will make some suggestions for addressing this general issue but will especially analyze the role of care in this connection as well as the related notions of empathy and solidarity and the contributions they can make to transnational recognition and redistribution. Whereas some theorists have considered the role of recognizing groups, particularly cultural minorities, within the framework of distributive justice,3 a focus on care and solidarity points to an important mode of attending to relevant differences among individuals or groups insofar as it draws attention to people’s particular needs and vulnerabilities. Beyond its role in thematizing a way of attending to differences, care has also been connected to globalization in other significant ways, particularly in feminist analyses such as those of Fiona Robinson. In an article in the Journal of Global Ethics, Recognition in Redistribution: Care and Diversity in Global Justice